Eurovision is a sociopolitical feast of the Western World’s conflicting attitudes, mores, allegiances, petty vengeances, and questionable fashion choices. And music.

And there is music – that may or may not go along with all the swirling camera sweeps and cannon-shot flash pyrotechnics made to be seen a half mile away in the cheap seats of the show’s cavernous yet always-filled-to-capacity-with-thousands theaters. It is showy and expensive, which means, in these tenuous European Union times, that there are countries competing who cannot and must not win, no matter how good their song is, because the winner’s home country is obliged to host the competition the following year. A few years back, at one point, the entry from bankrupt Cyprus was leading the voting, which led to a flurry of jokes on Twitter about how German Chancellor Angela Merkel would be the one who’d have to pay for it, along with its already established financial bailout of the country; no matter, the Cyprus lead did not last.

Russia’s act was outwardly booed during the voting in 2014 not because of its song, but because of the country’s nearly hysterical homophobic reaction to eventual winner Conchita Wurst, of Austria, for being a dude with a well-manicured full beard and lengthy Scandal-worthy hair wearing out a sequined gown and singing a truly soaring anthem, “Rise Like A Phoenix”, which should have been the theme for that last Bond film instead of whatever Sam Smith and friend came up with. This controversy with Russia and a few other countries led to the 2015 Eurovision theme of “Building Bridges” expressly including images of same-sex relationships.

Therefore, it isn’t surprising that Logo will broadcast Eurovision on American television for the first time.

The competition itself isn’t any more camp than, say, Miss America and our various award shows, including and most especially the red carpets, all wrapped up together in a big glitter ball. All wrapped up together in a big nonstop glitter ball with no commercial breaks. Over two dozen acts will perform their songs live on stage in a continuous three-hour stream. There is a break of sorts, between the acts, with an intro video identifying the act’s home country in an expression of the show’s theme, but these are deliberately only seconds long. 2015’s “Building Bridges” intro videos showed each act receiving a mailed package that contains an item to help them meet and “build a bridge” to a group or activity in their home country, but these are deliberately only seconds long.

After the performances is the great European tradition of The Interval. Rarely longer than fifteen minutes, it both starts and ends with a montage of clips of the twenty-odd acts that you just watched, with a non-competing performer in between — who is sometimes better than any of the competing performers, or is interesting for reasons that have nothing to do with performing. 2012’s Eurovision was already a dicey proposition for being held in Azerbaijan, a country highly scrutinized for its reported human rights abuses; the interval singer being the President’s son-in-law, at the hire of the project manager, the President’s wife, made for even more scrutiny.

Ostensibly during the Interval, the European viewers eligible are calling/texting the assigned phone numbers and voting — and here’s where the genius of this whole thing comes in: you cannot vote for your own country! You supposedly did that during your country’s own competition to select a Eurovision act in the first place!

Voters in Eurovision have to call or text and vote for a performer from other country.

And then comes the pièce de résistance, the vote count, the most fascinating part of this entire competition, maybe because something like this would never be tolerated on an American show. For the next hour — and it really does take an entire hour — the Eurovision hosts “call” and speak via satellite to eachindividualcountry in the competition. There’s a couple of minutes of banter and vote counts for every one of the 43 countries – and don’t think the vote counts are a single number! It’s positional voting, in which the citizens’ calls and texts of each country are counted up and tiered one through 7 out to the other countries, and then the professional juries of each country get to grant the topmost 8, 10, and 12 votes – which are called out by their names in French, nuit, dix, and douze, in a very longstanding Eurovision tradition – out to the other countries. Simple math reveals the winner pretty much by the 38th call, but all 43 calls are made anyway.

This year, though, Eurovision has eliminated that possibility by changing the rules! No more are the professionals’ votes given higher placement preference over the hoi polloi!

Whatever other questions and further suspicions you have about Eurovision, as you watch it for the first time, can most likely be explained and/or confirmed by the competition’s mostaccuratesourcedocuments — its drinking games.

Share this:

Like this:

Johnny’s Entertainment (afterwards JE) is the music powerhouse behind dozens of Japan’s top male idol groups, dominating the music charts and saturating all corners of the Japanese mediascape from talk shows to beer ads in train stations. Boy band KAT-TUN debuted under JE in 2006 with market conditions ripe for success. However, things didn’t turn out as expected. In ten years KAT-TUN has lost three members due to scandal, contractual disputes, and “personal” reasons.

Getting Down to Business!

Japan remains the world’s second largest CD market after the United States, emphasizing the importance of physical media. JE is largely responsible for this, since fans purchase multiple copies (sometimes in multiple editions, with limited covers) in order to gain access to benefits such as collector’s items. Regular releases of CDs limited to certain retailers such as Tower Records provide additional benefits, spurring multiple purchases.

JE also operates official Johnny’s Entertainment Shops which sell a variety of concert goods, CDs, DVDs, and coveted “shop photos” of groups and individual members. JE idols are usually spokesmen for various advertising campaigns, and more successful groups host TV programs and JE-affiliated music shows. JE idols frequently act in Japanese television dramas and films.

Through this model, JE has consistently maintained high sales and a high degree of market saturation, guaranteeing circulation through a transmedia empire designed for wide exposure and constant relevance.

The Start of KAT-TUN

KAT-TUN, consisting of Kamenashi Kazuya, Akanishi Jin, Taguchi Junnosuke, Tanaka Koki, Ueda Tastuya, and Nakamaru Yuichi, was formed in 2001 and officially debuted on March 22, 2006. During the five years between their formation and official debut, the group performed the regular task of “Johnny’s Jrs.”, similar to Korean trainees – mostly providing back-up dancing for senior groups on tour and during television performances. However, due to their popularity, they also held their own concerts. By the time KAT-TUN formally debuted they were already familiar faces to fans of JE, ensuring wide support when their single Real Face was released in 2006 (Johnny & Associates, 2016).

Real Face was a massive success, topping the Oricon charts (the Japanese equivalent to the Billboard charts) and propelling KAT-TUN past records previously held by their esteemed senior group Arashi. Constantly busy with tours and TV appearances, the young group seemed poised to take JE to a new level of achievement. Yet troubles began early.

Shortly after the release of their second single, Signal, JE announced that Akanishi would improve his English through studying abroad in the United States. Some fans felt this was unfair, leaving KAT-TUN minus one member so soon after their official debut, though the group continued with their activities even in Akanishi’s absence.

As one of the most popular members, his sudden disappearance changed the dynamic of KAT-TUN’s onscreen performances.

Speculation that Akanishi was treating his time in the United States more like vacation than intense language study added fuel to the fire and rumors of a break-up consistently sprung up in online fan commentary.

Akanishi returned to the fold in spring of 2007, and KAT-TUN continued their string of hits with Keep the Faith, Lips, Don’t U Ever Stop, and White X’Mas (Johnny & Associates, 2016). The group performed for four consecutive days at the Tokyo Dome, breaking a record for Japanese artists. With the group reassembled, fans – and JE – seemed relieved. Despite JE’s debut of another group, Hey!Say!JUMP, KAT-TUN remained the darling of JE’s newer idols.

The Breaks for KAT-TUN

In 2010, KAT-TUN announced they would begin a world tour while Akanishi performed as a solo artist in the United States. The accompanying album for the world tour, No More Pain, contains no solo track from Akanishi unlike the other members. This despite his participation in some of the other tracks before his journey overseas. A month after No More Pain’s summer release, JE announced Akanishi’s official departure to concentrate on his solo career.

While the signs had been pointing to such a move, the shock in the Japanese music industry and the fan community was palpable.

The 3/11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami shortly followed this, disrupting plans for the group’s five year anniversary celebrations. While the members participated in various initiatives through JE to raise money and awareness, the industry attempted to reorganize itself in the wake of the severe national disaster. One of KAT-TUN’s regular Johnny’s Jr. support units, Kis-My-Ft2, even delayed their official debut as a group. Continuing their strong run of tie-ins, KAT-TUN released Birth, an accompanying song for Kamenashi’s newest TV drama. Relying on this often-used tactic, KAT-TUN even helped cross-promote other JE idols; a following single Fumetsu No Scrum was for Kanjani8 member Yasuda Shota’s TV drama.

JE’s marketing tactics now seemed intertwined with a sense of JE togetherness, and a responsibility to provide entertainment to a nation still reeling from drastic change and damage.

Again, as things began to settle, change hit KAT-TUN and JE hard. Tanaka was removed from KAT-TUN and JE in 2013 for contract violation. While Akanishi’s previous departure had been fairly scandalous, his image was somewhat redeemed through his dedication to a solo career and his establishment of a family. The initial rift between Akanishi and JE was often framed under creative differences. Tanaka’s contract, on the other hand, was terminated the same day nude photos of him surfaced in a tabloid magazine, allegedly sent by Tanaka to a fan. Coupled with other contract violations, JE quickly severed ties with Tanaka, attempting to maintain KAT-TUN’s (and overall, JE’s) image.

Despite the loss of both Akanishi and Tanaka, KAT-TUN remained active, following the consistent JE pattern of single releases, album releases, tours, and the promotional circuit. While the gossip about the previous scandals frequently became an issue, the KAT-TUN machine continued forward, even with increasing competition from younger JE groups. Their 2014 album come here again put them at the top of the charts, unsurprisingly featuring a hit single tied to a member’s drama, this time Nakamaru.

In November of 2015 Taguchi made the sudden announcement he would leave KAT-TUN to focus on his personal life; unlike Akanishi and Tanaka, he announced no plans to continue his life in the entertainment industry. As one of KAT-TUN’s most beloved members and a regular in drama series and TV hosting duties, this announcement seemed completely out of left field. JE fans offered puzzled theories as to why Taguchi would choose to leave KAT-TUN the following spring, and as usual, gossip abounds.

In ten years KAT-TUN has lost three members due to scandal, contractual disputes, and “personal” reasons. JE has continued to push forward new groups every year, the market now crowded with label-mate competitors like Kis-My-Ft2 and SexyZone.

Even with the departure of three members, KAT-TUN remains a sales powerhouse; every one of their twenty-four singles has debuted at number one on the Oricon charts.

This immense amount of revenue adds to KAT-TUN’s recognizability as spokesmen in advertising (Nintendo, Suzuki, Panasonic, Kirin), TV hosts and guests (Shonen Club, Cartoon KAT-TUN), and actors (Akanishi and Kamenashi in Gokusen 2, Ueda in Boys on the Run, etc).

Life after KAT-TUN offers separate challenges that continue to affect the group’s image under JE. Akanishi continued to struggle with JE in terms of marketing and access while under contract as a solo artist, including facing penalties from the company after revealing his marriage to pregnant actress Kuroki Meisa in 2012. Widely recognized in the media as a shotgun wedding by anyone doing basic mathematics, the “moral” scandal put Akanishi under a “freeze” by JE that limited his earning potential. After recently severing ties with the label, he established his own record company and has gone on to release multiple albums and performed, perhaps none-too-subtly, on his Jindependence tour in Japan. Tanaka, on the other hand, quickly shifted gears after his dismissal from JE. While his role in KAT-TUN was default rapper, he changed genres and formed the indie rock band INKT within the same year of his contract termination.

What we can learn from the saga of KAT-TUN

More than a mere chronicle of ten years in JE history, KAT-TUN’s journey offers insight into the changing nature of Japanese media and the fan practices that keep it running. Between 2006 and 2016 the landscape of media in Japan shifted, especially for the original plan of market domination JE undoubtedly envisioned for KAT-TUN.

JE wasn’t prepared for two things in particular: the rise of a similar market in the female idol factory of AKB48 and its affiliates, and the increasing popularity of male Korean idols in the Japanese market.

AKB48 debuted the same month as KAT-TUN, but the business model expanded at a wildly rapid rate and sister groups were formed on a regular basis in other Japanese cities and abroad in China and Indonesia. This immediately created a gigantic market shift. AKB48’s popularity meant a sudden influx of rival groups competing for stage space – quite literally. The CD market was another issue, with AKB48’s “idols you can meet” philosophy coupled with fan participation in elections for singers for each single competing with JE’s normally impressive sales tallies and sense of distance between fan and idol due to the idol’s popularity. While a typical KAT-TUN fan regularly purchased photos of members at a Johnny’s Shop as a form of connection, early AKB48 fans could see their idols perform daily, shake hands with them, and take pictures with them.

Male K-pop idols provided more direct competition for JE since KAT-TUN’s debut in 2006. More K-pop singers began rounds of promotional events and tours in Japan, offering better chances of attending concerts and getting time with idols. K-pop singers often refashion already successful Korean language hits into Japanese language versions, stress their desire to learn Japanese and demonstrate their enjoyment of their time in Japan, and are often far more accessible in terms of fan engagement and obtaining tickets to shows. K-pop singers also adapt their marketing strategies to Japan, often including meet-and-greet opportunities and other benefits based on the type and quantity of purchased CDs. While fan club membership is still important, fans have easier access to most male K-pop idols because of the intensity of the promotion schedule and the marketing tactics.

The geographic closeness also means dedicated Japanese fans can see Korean singers perform in Korea if the timing and financial situation is right, offering another venue for enjoying their music.

JE has also routinely failed to address the international popularity of its idols, especially KAT-TUN. JE continues a business model focused almost exclusively on Japanese consumers and the physicality of the CD market. Ignoring the gigantic fan communities in Asia aside from KAT-TUN’s 2010 World Tour – where ‘World’ simply meant ‘Korea and Taiwan’ – it is unsurprising that JE seems to lag with the times. In this closed system, KAT-TUN remains fairly powerful domestically and possesses numerous fans overseas, but outreach to them is low and JE loses out on revenue and fan loyalty in the process.

KAT-TUN’s debut roughly overlaps with the ‘advent’ of Web 2.0, making it seem quite outdated that JE content is unavailable outside of Japan via iTunes or other digital distribution systems. While CD purchases through certain authorized retailers that ship abroad contribute to Oricon rankings, and therefore offer overseas fans a way to support their idols and obtain goods officially, the system operates in a constant conflict of priorities.

JE idols don’t maintain social media web presences on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or Japanese sites like Mixi and Ameblo.

Forced to provide updates through the blog section of JE’s website, the personal touch that forges transcultural connections in the digital age is frequently missing. Rather than adopting the K-pop model of looking globally for more fans, revenue, and recognition, JE seems content with their idols dominating the system at home, even when their position within that system is threatened.

This has inadvertently contributed to many of JE’s targeted issues, such as the ‘illegal’ distribution of fan club information and the reselling of official goods. With a system predicated on access within Japan, fans naturally networked to better distribute coveted items. In not creating an overseas market themselves, JE left a vacuum that creative and resourceful fans utilized to make their own market. This even applies domestically, where Japanese fans residing in locations outlying the major performance venues of Tokyo and Osaka rely on secondhand services to obtain JE items, especially concert goods.

KAT-TUN faces a domestic mediascape now riddled with competing female mega groups and K-pop idols that are more linked-in technologically and have the capacity to regularly address, interact with, and cater to global audiences. JE’s domestic game is floundering even with senior groups; SMAP recently caused a scandal with a suspected breakup nullified by an awkward press conference and national apology, and Arashi’s concerts are so swamped with fan club members attending repeatedly that rumors of facial recognition software to deter repeaters abounds (Osaki 2016, Kay 2015). How JE plans to function in a media environment wildly different than the guaranteed success of Real Face in 2006 remains to be seen.

KAT-TUN’s future as a three-man group is uncertain, though the remaining three members remain the least damaged by gossip about their reputations and off-camera lives. Over the span of ten years, the members of KAT-TUN have faced the extreme highs and lows of the Japanese media system. Frequently falling under scrutiny and surviving bad press, they remain a cornerstone of the industry with potential both in Japan and far beyond its borders. Perhaps their case will change JE’s attitude towards fans and marketing – or perhaps things will remain business as usual.

Miranda Ruth Larsen is a PhD student at the University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on the transcultural appeals of masculinities in Japanese and Korean popular music. She became a KAT-TUN fan a few months before their official debut.

Like this:

Stifled, uplifted, reclaimed, there is threat and possibility in the sounds made by women.Even among feminist figures, the temptation to criticize other women’s voices can be overwhelming—as whenNaomi Wolf scolded young women and told them to “give up the vocal fry and reclaim your strong female voice”. So it is perhaps not all that surprising that musical groups headed by and intended for young women are almost impossible for the broader public to take seriously. Except, that is, when the public is other girls.

What we now know as the classic “girl group” has its roots in vaudeville. The first sister acts were both literally and figuratively sisters—women who realized their strength in numbers and gained audiences’ loyalty with team-based performances. The concept of a sister act cut across class and race, as with the Hyers Sisters, a duo who made their name in both minstrel acts and classical concerts.In the words of theatre and performing arts scholar Jocelyn L. Buckner, the Hyers sisters created “new and spectacular opportunities for black and female artists creating lives in the theatre” by performing works that subverted the typical plantation sketch and brought attention to the emotions and humanity of slaves and black Americans.

These black sister acts were quickly overtaken by groups of white sisters who borrowed liberally from African-American culture and music. In the 1920s, Martha, Connie, and Helvetia Boswell translated time spent watching black musical acts in New Orleans into their own vaudeville show. In the mouths of three white sisters, songs that would have been categorized as “race music” were simply viewed as inventive close harmony ditties. Spurred along by the rise of radio, The Boswell Sisters became a hot commodity.

Their co-opting of black sounds was so complete that according to Buckner, their “husky, syncopated, sexy, and disembodied vocal renderings made white broadcast listeners, already anxious about the threat of cultural miscegenation, uneasy about the fact that they might be listening to—and enjoying—black singers.” Today, The Boswell Sistersare regarded as the first successful white artists who “sounded black.”

The borrowed sounds of the Boswells became a template for a new spate of girl groups like The Andrews Sisters, who modeled their sound and their squeaky-clean swing image on their predecessors. Another sister act, The Chordettes, embodied the perky early 1950s with songs like “Mr. Sandman” and “Lollipop,” making music that couldn’t feel farther from the musical innovation of black jazz artists.

But something was shifting as America got out of its wartime funk and back into life—young people. For white teenagers of the 1950s and early 1960s, the war was a distant memory and the penny-pinching Great Depression an irrelevant blip in the past. Unlike their parents, the era’s teenagers had disposable income, ready access to automobiles, and consolidated high schools that exposed them to large numbers of other teens. Mass teen culture was born.

Girl groups, on the other hand, had never really died, and groups of young women took easily to the doo-wop and rock sounds that started emerging in the 1950s. But it took a scandal to really get girl groups going. In 1959, revelations that Dick Clark and other national DJs had accepted cash bribes (“payola”) to play some records on the air and not othersled to Congressional hearings and a sea change in the commercial landscape of pop.

Instead of allowing local DJs freedom to play what they wanted, radio stations quickly developed “top 40” formats that put pressure on labels to play to the national market. AsMichele Hilmes writes, “a more standardized, homogenized sound developed,” often at the expense of black, male artists, and labels hastened to “clean up” rock music. In their quest to find “cleaner” music that would appeal to a mass, teen audience, they turned to artists they saw as less threatening—young women, often black or of mixed race.

Young women appealed to other young women, who could be counted on to spend their money on hit records. They were also cheap to hire and easy to exploit.As Jacqueline Warwick writes in her essential Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s,

“the malleability of adolescent female singer was attractive to young male producers seeking to establish themselves in the music business…[producers’] sense of black women as unthreatening and comforting in comparison to black men corresponds to a prevalent stereotype of black women as mammy.”

By some counts, over 750 of such acts proliferated over the next decade,complete with names like “The Poni-Tails” and “Julie and the Desires.” Girl groups were the musical equivalent of throwing gum to the wall to see if it sticks—no biggie if it falls off.

But girls are more complicated than that, as a 1962 almost-hit proves. It’s a song straight out of a pop funeral procession—minor melody, basic orchestration, each word painfully articulate.

A year later, The Crystals would gain fame with songs like “He’s a Rebel,” “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Then He Kissed Me.” But in 1962, their recording of “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” almost sunk the band.

The story of the song’s composition and production is like a collision of everything that was problematic about girl groups. Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin (the songwriting duo behind later megahits like The Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”) got the idea for the song when they learned that their babysitter, “Little Eva” Boyd, was being beaten by her boyfriend. Boyd reportedly told them that it was his way of showing her that he loved him.

Inspiration struck, as it were, and the team handed the song over to Phil Spector, who gave it his wall of sound treatment along with The Crystals. The performers abhorred it—Barbara Alston, whose haunting lead vocal makes the track a real skin-crawler to this day,said that “After we cut it, we absolutely hated it. Still do.” King, who wrote the music, agrees:In 2012, she said that “I kind of wish I hadn’t written any part of that song.”

But the damage was done. Despitean initial favorable review in Billboard, PTA groups and public complaints soon shook the song’s chart chances. Its producer, Phil Spector, himself a domestic abuser, eventually pulled it from the radio.

It wasn’t enough that the song drew on the life experiences of a young black woman who wasn’t even given the chance to tell her own story—and Boyd, who recorded “The Loco-Motion” and “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby,” could definitely sing. Alston recalls that Spector’s controlling ways made the recording session “terrible,” but the band wasn’t even rewarded for their obedience. Rather, Spector kicked the singers out of the Crystals and released vocals from another girl group, Darlene Love and The Blossoms, under The Crystals’ name instead.

During The Blossoms’ short tenure as Crystals, they got the best and most memorable song in the group’s canon, “He’s A Rebel.” The original Crystals weren’t even aware that they had been replaced until they heard “their” own song on the radio. The song shot up to number one and they were forced to perform it live on stage, but Alston simply didn’t have Love’s live range and was booted to second-rate status when Love herself joined the newly reformed Crystals for the remainder of the band’s short tenure.

Even worse, The Crystals were forced to participate in Spector’s Svengali-esquescheme to boot out his partner. He forced them to record a monotonous ten-minute song called “Let’s Dance the Screw”—a song so terrible, so lengthy and so controversial in subject matter that it could never be played on the radio. The song was never released publicly, but being forced to participate inSpector’s literal “screw you” to his business partner must have reminded the performers that they were not just interchangeable, but completely beholden to their producer.

Behind every girl group was a group of men pulling the puppet strings, sometimes brutally. But here’s the thing—to their fans, girl groups meant something. Listeners had no idea about the hard work and humiliation that went on behind the scenes of songs like “The Leader of the Pack” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” They didn’t realize that Diana Rosshad to attend charm school to record at Motown, or that four of The Ronettes’ songs were credited to The Crystals instead, or that the Shangri-Lasmade up much of their tough-girl image to fend off potential attackers. Instead, they heard girl groups’ songs as impassioned emotional experiences—legitimate expressions of the ups and downs of teen life.

Girl groups’ songs weren’t just great because they took listeners on a rollercoaster of teenage love and desire. Rather,writes Cynthia J. Cyrus, they put girls at the center of everything. Girls could try on the identities of other girls, ones who fell for “Sweet-Talkin’ Guy”s or who warned their rivals to “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby.” By singing along with girl groups, teenagers became part of the group themselves, identifying closely with other girls and finding possibility within the lyrics and the stylized performances of their favorite artists.

Later girl groups have come by their success just as honestly. Groups like The Bangles, Exposé, En Vogue, Sisters With Voices, The Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, and Girls’ Generation aren’t always in control of their careers.

Reviewers often skewer music by girls, for girls as vapid or inconsequential. But that doesn’t diminish their importance.

They’ve gone on to inspire everyone fromThe Beatles to the boundary-pushing “girl bands” like Hole and Bikini Kill that,as Karina Eileraas puts it, “[perform] ugliness as resistance.” But perhaps using their trickle-down influence in a world still dominated by the male gaze and the male ear is not the point. To find the real influence of girl groups, just look for the current and former girls who found themselves—idealized or not—in their sisters’ voices.

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based author and historian. Erin’s work on history and culture has appeared in publications including mental_floss, NPR’s This I Believe, The Onion, Popular Science, Modern Farmer and JSTOR Daily. You can find more of her work at erinblakemore.com.

Like this:

The first time I heard them was in a middle school gymnasium with the first feelings of adolescence flushing through my body. Mostly through the parts that I didn’t know much about but I knew made me a girl. Another thing I knew about being a girl: nobody likes the new girl, especially the “cute” new girl. Except for the boys. I was at a tricky moment in my formation of self. I remember the feeling of being new, of constantly being stared at, of being lonely.

I remember the feeling of knowing when the girls whispered about me and the feeling of icy silence when they didn’t. I remember the sting on my skin when one of boys snapped my bra and the sting in my heart when one of the mean girls wasn’t satisfied by whispering or silence. I remember words like “slut” and “trashy” and “Who does she think she is in that ‘fuck me’ red lipstick?’” I remember Jason’ B’s hands on my hips, dangerously close to my butt, when the beat dropped – what would become a highly recognizable sound – to “Bonita Applebum.”

“Hey Bonita! Glad to meet ya/For the kind of stunning newness/I must have foreseen ya/Hey, being with you is a top priority/Ain’t no need to question the authority”

Everything else went silent as I received my first introduction to that which would trigger my personal revolution. Hip Hop.

The following Monday in school I received my first gift ever from a boy: a mixtape. Dubbed over one of his parent’s old doo-wop tapes, the track list was written on a post-it note in Jason B.’s 7th-grade-boy-looks-like-a-serial-killer’s-handwriting. He handed it off to me in between classes – no cover, no words, just the songs. Three of which were Tribe songs: “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” “Can I Kick It?” and “Bonita Applebum.”

***

In 1990, I was 11 years old and had just moved to Yardley, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. The move not only relocated me from the home I had so far spent all of my life in but also separated me from my brother (reluctantly) and my mother (happily). My parents had been divorced since before I was in kindergarten and we had been living driving distance away, across the river in New Jersey, my brother and I splitting time with both parents. When my mom decided to move to Florida my brother went with her but I elected to move in with my Dad – just a bachelor and his pre-teen daughter kickin’ it in suburbia. This choice would inform so much of my future self.

About the same time I was navigating a new parent, a new home and neighborhood, a new school, A Tribe Called Quest dropped their groundbreaking album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Childhood friends and just a couple of teenagers from Queens, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaeed Muhammad and Jarobi, were about to embark on a musical journey that would define hip hop for generations to come. It would also help to define me.

“Back in the days when I was a teenager/Before I status and before I had a pager/you could find Alicia listening to hip hop/My pops used to say/it reminded him of be-bop.”

In the fall of 1991, I was in eighth grade just shy of my 13th birthday, on which I requested, and received, a pink casio boombox with a cassette and CD player and a copy of Low End Theory. Having spent the summer with Jason Ballek’s mixtape growing weary in our living room stereo, I could finally listen in the privacy of my own room with my own private thoughts and my own private feelings.

Q-Tip was my favorite. The one, although I didn’t really know it at the time, I wanted to date (read: fuck). I wanted to be enveloped in his smooth voice and the safety of his respectful flirtations. But, Phife. Phife Dawg. He was the fire. Assertive. Cocky. And hot on the mic. “Yo, microphone check one-two, what is this? The five-foot assassin with the roughneck business.”

I am not the first person to point out the profound effect of this “Yo.” This verse. THIS SONG. In Michael Rappaport’s 2012 documentary, Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, Low End Theory is credited by many as the emergence of Phife Dawg. This is one of the reasons why it has always been my favorite Tribe album. This track in particular felt very personal, beginning with the “Yo,” a common phrase in my Philly influenced vocabulary. Phife Dawg was was my reflection of self – the five-foot Alicia. I felt powerful when I sang along with him. He got me. “You see my aura’s positive/I don’t promote no junk/and I’m far from a bully/and I ain’t a punk,” he rapped with a swagger and confidence I was desperate to emulate.

Low End Theory is also full of hits. Timeless tracks embedded with social consciousness, originality and the continued celebration of positive black community first introduced on People’s Travels. There was one song in particular that played an important role in my life at the time.

“The jazz, the what? The jazz can move that ass/Cause the Tribe originates that feeling’ of pizzazz/It’s the universal sound, best to brothers underground/In the one-six below, ya didn’t have to go”

Although I had now lived with my father for over a year, he remained a mystery to me. I knew he grew up in Manayunk, a now gentrified and trendy area in the heart of Philadelphia, and was loyal to his city. Row homes still dominate the cobblestone streets where he once lived and, if you’re visiting the city with him, he will show you where he played stick ball during the day and the window he snuck out of at night to play trumpet in clubs he wasn’t even old enough to get into. He met my mom in one of those clubs and amidst vibrant horns and funky bass lines, they fell in love. I am certain it was the passion for music and the energy vibrating from his heart when he played that my mom was drawn to. My dad loves music. Jazz, in particular. The moody musings of Miles Davis, the dance friendly swing of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, the party jams of Tower of Power and always, always the warmhearted songs of Louis Armstrong.

Without me even realizing I needed it, Tribe gave me a site for connecting with my dad. For bridging the gap between our generation but also for cracking open the silence that shrouded so much of our alone time. It’s not that we didn’t get along it’s just that he didn’t quite know what to do with a teenage girl just like I didn’t really know what to do with my single father, an anomaly in the nuclear family friendly neighborhood he had settled in once I decided to move in.

Inspired by my newly developed fandom and empowered by a boombox and cassette tape, I did what most hip hop heads did to connect with someone – I made him a mixtape. A personal collection of introductions to what had quickly become my favorite genre, recorded from the Q-102 nightly countdown by hitting pause at the commercial, trying to catch the beginning without catching the voice of the DJ and racing to go to the bathroom before the song ended. It was about half Tribe songs plus other members of Native Tongues – De La Soul, Leaders of the New School, Black Sheep. The only women to make an appearance were Queen Latifah and Monie Love on the joint track “Ladies First.”

It’s pure coincidence that I was coming of age during hip-hop’s Golden Era, that I happened to reside on the East Coast, just a train ride away from the New York boroughs where the majority of the movement was being born. At the same time, across the country, the Riot Grrrl movement was created by young women responding to sexual assault and reproductive freedom violations. And while those are the exact issues that would one day bring me to my feminism, they were not yet my battles. At 11, 12, 13 years old I hadn’t yet felt the lived experiences of systemic sexism or racism or the multitudes of ways our country oppresses the “other,” myself included. I hadn’t yet learned how to see gender as an essential part of my identity.

Tribe was not immune to the sexism embedded in hip hop culture, as reflected in a sampling of their lyrics, but, unlike most major label produced hip hop, sexism and vulgarity didn’t dominate their message. While the adult, feminist version of myself is much more in tune to lyrics like “Where the hell can Nikki be/I’m gonna smack her up” the teenage Alicia was much more receptive to “Honey check it out/you got me mesmerized/wit your black hair/and your phat ass thighs.” It was in the celebration of a different aesthetic that I began to see myself.

Prior to becoming a Tribe fan, I was immersed in two highly feminized hobbies: ballet and gymnastics. Oh, and I wanted to be an actress. Of course I did. What other options do we present to young women? I wasn’t disciplined enough for ballet – or acting – and I wasn’t strong enough, physically or emotionally, for gymnastics. My boobs were too big for both (even at 12). This was before hip hop dance was being offered in suburban dance studios, before I was old enough to go to clubs; MTV was barely 10 years old and still dominated by rock and pop. In 2016 you can finally see the influence of hip-hop in both gymnastics and ballet but in the early 90’s the iconology was still all Nadia and Pavlova. Anglo-European bodies that moved with strict delicacy and performed the technique as directed. Exactly like the bodies in my gym and dance studio. Except for my body. I was fleshy and full where the other girls were lean and taut. One day, a girl in my dance class asked why I was wearing two leotards. I was mortified. “It’s a sports bra” I whispered. I didn’t cry. I didn’t tell anyone it hurt. Dancing without a sports bra was not an option. So, I just swallowed the shame.

“In all the years I’ve been a therapist, I’ve yet to meet one girl who likes her body,” says Mary Pipher, PhD in Reviving Ophelia, her groundbreaking research on the selves of adolescent girls. Pipher found the most insidious factor inhibiting the development of happy healthy young women was the loss of their “true selves.” In an attempt to assimilate to the peer group – to belong – girls either sacrifice or never even identify the unique qualities and personality traits that make up their truest self. Instead they create a false version that satisfies the standards of the status quo. For girls, this is most frequently accomplished via physical appearance that reflects culturally approved attractiveness. Attractiveness determined by the white, male gaze. Hip hop, while still problematic, offers a different definition of attractive.

Through hip hop music and Tribe’s prolific rhymes that reflected respect and reverence for women, I begin to access a freedom I didn’t even know I was missing. Their words made me think and their voices made me feel. They were simultaneously smart, angry, sexy, proud, confident and unapologetic. Listening to this music gave me permission to be all those things. I was just on the cusp of who I would become and A Tribe Called Quest helped me figure it out. They taught me I was allowed to have a voice – that I could say NO to the world desires and YES to my own. Every other space I inhabited was governed by rules: School, dance class, gymnastics, my father’s house, the whole damned world. Telling me who I could and couldn’t be. In the community that Tribe created, I could just be myself. And, I was beginning to know who that person was.

It would be two more years before Tribe released a follow up to Low End Theory and I was again the new girl at school. My dad’s relocation to North Carolina for “work” also included a new relationship that had very little space for me so I reunited with my mother and brother in South Florida. Swimming in a sea of tanned female bodies, all with legs and arms exposed, I felt more foreign than I ever had. Shorts? At school? Just when I thought I had some discovery of self, I was again lost in a overwhelming desire to belong. I didn’t know how to dress for the weather or the “culture,” my brother was too young to be a friend and my relationship with my mother was as uncomfortable as ever. Even the radio was unfamiliar. 90’s grunge continued to dominate the mainstream airwaves and hip hop was still reserved to specialty stations, though South Florida/Miami, had it’s own version. It involved a lot more bass, a lot more booty and a lot less consciousness.

Once again, Tribe was my salvation. The first time I heard Midnight Marauders, I was packed six people deep in the back seat of a Suzuki Sidekick. It was my sophomore year in High School, and everyone in the car was a stranger except for Jackie, who was also new and from New York. We became fast friends and in the back seat of this wannabe Jeep, with the warmth of the sun on my face, I heard “Award Tour” for the first time and I was home again. This is what Tribe’s music has always represented to me – a familiar place inside myself. A place that was always accessible through their music and their legacy.

In 1998, after releasing two more less than stellar albums, A Tribe Called Quest broke-up. I was 19 and living in New York City when I heard the news. It was the cover story on The Source magazine that lined the newsstands. I still have the original copy. Some fans were confused. Some were angry. We were all disappointed. It was the end of an era. A golden era. Hip-hop now permeated the airwaves and thanks to Tribe’s guidance we had The Roots, Mos Def, Common, and so many more who built off that legacy, including this girl. This girl who became more than a fan. She became a feminist, a professor, a performer, a writer, and a self-determined, independent woman. A large part in thanks to a couple of fellas who wondered if “So far, I hope you like rap songs.”

And, I do. I love them.

Alicia Swiz is a professor, performer and professional feminist. A Jersey girl in Chicago by way of North Carolina, Alicia holds an MA in Women’s & Gender Studies and a BA in Sociology. She is committed to raising awareness of feminism and women’s issues through humor, candid observation and being really smart.

Drawing from her personal experience and her academic training, Alicia facilitates conversations about feminism, gender, sex and pop culture. She is an Adjunct Professor of Humanities at Harold Washington College in Chicago, IL where she teaches Media and Pop Culture via Feminist Theory. As a brand ambassador for Smear Campaign Cosmetics, Alicia is the founder of SlutTalk, a performance and dialogue that raises awareness of slut shaming and encourages sex positivity. She is a writer of feminist rants, raves and film critiques for The Frisky, Role Reboot and Huffington Post Chicago, among others. A graduate of Feminine Comique, Alicia has performed at The Kates, Fillet of Solo, Under the Gun Theater and more.